


Fighting Fires Burning In My Head

by MyChemicalRachel



Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: Gen, Not Happy, Sad Evan "Buck" Buckley, Suicide mention, but it's talked about, no actual death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-01
Updated: 2020-05-01
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:07:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23954308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MyChemicalRachel/pseuds/MyChemicalRachel
Summary: Buck thought about dying a lot.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 61





	Fighting Fires Burning In My Head

**Author's Note:**

> This is just drabble. I was depressed, so I figured why not project onto Buck? Please heed the suicide mention warning. Take care, friends.  
> Title is from Undertow by Diplomacy.

Buck thought about dying a lot.

It was a given in his line of work and something he had to learn early on; You can’t save everyone.

He tried, certainly. There was something fulfilling about being able to save someone’s life. Something that resonated in him. As if each life he managed to save was another breath he was able to take. A breath he had earned.

He thought about death a lot, and more than he cared to admit to anyone, the death he thought about was his own.

Running into a fire, a distant voice asked if this was the last fire he would see. The flames could engulf him and he’d become one with the smoke.

The deadliest fires, he came to realize, were the ones he fought inside his own head. Fires that beckoned to him.

Sometimes he even thought about giving in.

There weren’t many things in Buck’s life that he considered worth living for. Good things, sure. But nothing that would stop him. Nothing that would ever cease to exist without him.

He thought of his friends, the people he considered family, and how they might react upon hearing the news of his untimely demise. It was a morbid sort of past time for him; imagining how they would find out. What their first reaction would be. His funeral. And after…

They would carry on. They were good at that. They couldn’t be in their line of work without being able to compartmentalize their feelings.

And they would miss him at first, of that he was sure. Bobby would set him a place at the table, maybe even scoop the food onto the plate, before remembering that Buck wasn’t there anymore.

Eddie would pull out his phone and start a new text, only to stare at the blank message when he realized Buck’s number wasn’t programmed.

Chimney would tell a joke and wait for the familiar laugh that always sounded the loudest, but no such thing would come.

But, as sure as Buck was of that, he was also certain that they would forget him in time.

Just like the smoke after a fire had been extinguished, Buck would fade in their minds. He would hang in the air at first, heavy and thick and choking, and then, in time, disappear completely. Just a vapor that smells faintly like smoke; a memory. Maybe fond, maybe not.

Buck thought about dying a lot.

He waited for the moment it would come up to him, not as a shadowed ghost or a menacing threat, but as a grinning boy. It would call to him. It would take him and he would go, anticipating what was waiting for him after. Maybe gates, or more fire, or perhaps there was nothing. Buck imagined that that was okay, too. He quite liked the idea of nothing.

Until then, he smiled. He laughed. He watched the people around him and tried to save as many lives as he could, because no matter how hard he tried for them, he knew the one life he would never really be able to save was his own.


End file.
